1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to techniques to ensure that only permitted invitees can access and attend web conferences.
2. Background of the Related Art
A web conference is an online meeting in which a moderator of the meeting shares a real-time view of his/her computer screen with remote meeting participants. Web conferences are often used to facilitate the demonstration of new software, to give a web seminar, or to facilitate a variety of other types of presentations over the Internet. A web conference provides a “visual communication” and is often used in conjunction with a telephone service (e.g., a conference call) for audio support. In operation, the meeting moderator connects, most often using a browser, to a web conferencing service. The service allows the moderator the ability to share with meeting participants the real-time view of a particular application or an entire desktop screen. Similarly, each meeting participant accesses the service to view the shared content via a web browser on his/her machine.
Web meetings are a growing industry, as companies seek to reduce travel costs with collaborations partners. These meetings often can have very dynamic sets of participants. As those participants join meetings, the host typically relies on the invitees revealing their identity correctly. Where an invitee is a registered user of the web conference software (e.g., a cloud-based service such as IBM® LotusLive™) and authenticates to that software, the meeting software can display the user's registered identity and the host is assured that the user is who he or she represents. When, however, the user is not registered or chooses not to authenticate, the user enters the meeting as a so-called “guest.” A guest user is asked to enter his or her identity. In this circumstance, the guest user can enter any identity, including a third person's identity, a false identity, or a fictitious identity. In this circumstance, the host cannot be assured that the guest user is who he is she represents. This problem (of identifying a guest in a web meeting) is exacerbated in larger meetings, wherein invitees impersonate other users or listen into meetings from which they were not invited but for which they know or can obtain the meeting location (a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL).
There is a need in the web conferencing art to provide improved techniques for identifying guests in web meetings.